Between 1947 and 1972 Australia had accepted 260 000 refugees and Displaced Persons as permanent settlers. Almost all of these were escaping from communist regimes, including Russian Christians escaping from China as well as those from eastern Europe. The mass emigration of 170 000 Displaced Persons from central European camps was completed by 1952 and had created institutions and practices which continued to be used for non-British immigrants for the next twenty years. In accepting refugees from communist states, Australia was pursuing the same policy as the United States and Canada. Many Germans who came as assisted migrants after 1952 had also come across from the Soviet occupation zone into Western Germany.

These refugees were acceptable because they were Europeans, within the definitions already used for the White Australia policy, and because they were escaping from communism. Most arrived under the Liberal–Country Party coalition which ruled Australia between 1949 and 1972. The Hungarian and Czechoslovak refugees were generally well educated. They were exempt from the two-year labour bond imposed on European refugees in the past and came into a system which was both better organised and more receptive. Consequently they did not suffer so much from public hostility or from being forced into jobs below their qualifications. Nor had they lived in camps for any length of time. They were escaping from the Soviet repression of their communist governments' attempts at liberalisation rather than from the aftermath of the Second World War.